DIY-Prefab

I have not said very much yet about brackets and markings that might make sense to have on your layout table. One thing that I think could make a lot of sense is to make the top surface of your table out of something that is very easy to draw on. How about adding an overlay of some type of surface that you can write on with dry-erase marking pens for example? You could use shiny white plastic laminate or perhaps a layer of smooth white melamine paneling. You could put some markings on your tabletop that were more permanent if you wanted to by using paint or indelible marking pen. You might also consider using colored plastic tape of the type that you can often find in the electrical department of a home improvement store. Different colors might be useful for different things on your panels.

The following diagram shows a table for building wall panels that are a maximum of 4’ wide. The tabletop is made out of a 4’x8’ sheet of plywood. The colored bands might be painted on or could be tape. They indicate where typical framing members would be placed. In this case there is an assumption that there would be some plywood overhang of the frame to connect to a second top plate (on the right) and to overlap floor panels (on the left). The green stripes show the location of the top and bottom plates. The red lines indicate where standard studs would be placed if they were at 16” on center. The blue band in the middle of the panel shows where the middle stud would be if the studs were at 24” on center spacing instead of at 16” on center.